White House “IP Czar” demands good data from rightsholders

Victoria Espinel, the new IP coordinator in the White House, has a mission to …

The new "IP Czar" in the White House is cooking up a "Joint Strategic Plan" to better enforce copyrights, trademarks, and patents—and she wants your help.

Victoria Espinel is the Intellectual Property Enforcement Coordinator, a position created in 2008 by the PRO-IP Act. She took to the White House blog yesterday to introduce herself and her work, saying, "My job is to help protect the ideas and creativity of the American public."

Her job is also to protect Americans, since "counterfeit products can pose a significant threat to the health and safety of us all. Imagine learning that the toothpaste you and your family have used for years contains a dangerous chemical. US Customs officials have seized several shipments of counterfeit toothpaste containing a dangerous amount of diethylene glycol, a chemical used in brake fluid, and that in sufficient doses is believed to cause kidney failure."

To keep our kidneys functioning, Espinel's grandly named Joint Strategic Plan will bring together all the different branches of government in order to crack down more efficiently on IP violations. While tainted toothpaste and counterfeit car parts get top billing, Espinel is also out to stop "illegal software" and "pirated video games."

Good data

Before she starts her coordinating, however, she needs some data to work with. Her first public request, then, is to figure out just how much of a problem counterfeiting and infringement have become. This is exceptionally tricky to find out, and many of the industry's estimates are plainly ludicrous (not that this stops top government officials from parroting them, even after thorough debunking).

To her credit, Espinel wants good data. The Federal Register notice making this process official says that submitters must include the methodology used in making their calculations, identify the source of their data, and provide "a copy of or a citation to each such source."

The second part of the Joint Strategic Plan is the "strategy" bit. What should the US be doing to enforce IP laws, and how should it be doing it? Among the things Espinel wants to know is how the US might "limit or prevent use of the internet to sell and/or disseminate infringing products (physical goods or digital content)."

Espinel's remit is limited; the law creating her position has her working on "enforcement," nothing more. If you have something to say about enforcement, however, anyone is invited to submit comments to intellectualproperty@omb.eop.gov.

What will the big rightsholders be telling Espinel? It's no secret; last week, the US Chamber of Commerce unveiled its "2010 Intellectual property agenda" (PDF). According to this document, the federal government needs to "encourage an active and robust partnership between content owners and ISPs" and "preserve the right of Internet Service Providers to use reasonable methods and effective tools to prevent the distribution of illicit content."

The Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement needs to be wrapped up in 2010, and it must be "ambitious and comprehensive." Also, Espinel and her team must encourage the feds to "oppose any efforts... to weaken IP rights in international institutions." What is the Chamber referring to? Things like the current debate over new international copyright exemptions for the blind. Remember, kids, IP law can never be too restrictive, and every attempt to bring balance back to copyrights and patents is "weakness."